A/N: Tomorrow's the premiere, guys! So excited to see how the second trip to New York will go! Also, thank you to all of you who have read. Hopefully for you, looking at the series from the point of view of one character has given you as different a perspective as it's given me. It's a credit to the show that we could technically do this with any one character and get a fascinating, FASCINATING, account of things we've already seen. Please let me know what you think of the story so far. I am in the middle of writing 3x2, so I promise you good things lie ahead!
He makes mental notes of the Land Without Magic Proper seeing as how Storybrooke seems to be its own entity. Too cramped for many of the metal carriages to zoom by, the people here in New York walk shoulder to shoulder, stepping on one another as they cross streets. No one notices anything about anyone, or if they do, they ignore it, even the naked man in just the hat and boots using his guitar to cover his genitals. "Welcome to Crazy Town," a man mumbled earlier and then proceeded to talk to himself about reptilian overlords.
The other popular way people arrive to New York has to do with the flying cylinders that silently cross the sky, leaving a white smoke trail in their wake. They look able to carry more people at a time than the carriages or even a ship, so he starts at where they make port. Easy to find, really.
Inside the "airport," everyone hustles dragging wheeled luggage around. He's come to expect the portable phones everyone has with them, so it no longer startles him when he hears a voice right next to him. They aren't talking to him, but whoever is on the other side of their conversation. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, he notes, pausing near the staircase that moves of its own accord. He will require guidance if he is to discern when the crocodile passed through here.
He walks up to a random counter to a woman with hair as short as Snow's, only a lighter brown, wearing a blue vest and red cravat.
"How may I help you?" she asks after eying him up and down as if she were counting his buttons.
"I was wondering if you could tell me how to find out if someone came through here earlier today, please." Throwing her his most dogged smile, he places his good hand on the countertop and begins drumming it.
"Oh, well, did they come through this airline?"
"I don't know."
"I could check if they flew with us today. Name?"
Oh, bloody hell. Mr. What Gold...Rumpelstiltskin would quickly have whatever this world's equivalent of the asylum workers chasing him.
"Emma Swan."
He can see her fingers move on little tiles with letters. How she does it so rapidly he has no idea, for they aren't in order. Rather, they lay in a random arrangement, but to this woman, biting her bottom lip, some new knowledge is entering her brain.
"You said today?"
"Yes, fairly sure it was today." Raising an eyebrow at him, she continues to peck away at the tiles but a little slower. Somehow he theorizes he should elaborate. "She arrived here with her, er, father and her son and I was supposed to meet up with them, but an emergency arose."
"You could have just called them. Reagan International Airport prides itself in doing all we can for our patrons' convenience. Full signal throughout the airport. We even have Wi-Fi."
"That sounds...accommodating," he tries. Seeing her nod, he sighs. He glances around while she continues to search for, what, he doesn't know. If she comes up empty-handed, he estimates one of these counters will have the necessary information. At least he avoided suffering in a long line like the one far over to his left. He easily imagines the same annoyed people behind him all deciding to incite a brawl at the same time.
"You are in luck!" she finally says. "Ooh, early morning flight. Yesterday..." The weary, suspicious...horrified look she gives him chills his blood. He's done something wrong...well, if he had really been planning to meet up with them, he's a full day late on rolling out the welcome wagon.
"Unbelievable!" he cries out. "They said today!"
"I'm sorry, sir. Emma Swan flew in on Flight...how exactly do you know them?"
"Oh, I thought I explained. They are on their way to see her, well, her brother. Me, I'm simply a friend of the family and we were all going to meet up and surprise this fellow since he and the father had a bit of a falling-out years ago and who knows what all he's been up to since last I saw him." Pausing, grateful he knows to mix truth into his lies...lying to a nice, helpful woman. Cad... Her eyes widen and her gaze shifts from looking at him like he's some criminal to like some puppy.
"Aw! An intervention! That's so heroic of you! I'll, I'll tell you what I'll do." She turns and gestures over to another woman on the far end of the counter. "Jan! Come take over for a second. I have to help this gentleman. Follow me. We can check the security cameras and see if they rented a car or hailed a cab or anything and that might give you a lead on where you can catch up with them."
"I'm very much obliged," he says.
The staff at the Sunshine Cab Company fail to live up to the connotations of their name, he thinks after spending a good hour there reiterating everything he told the woman at the airport, being sure to mention the term "intervention," although in what he was interfering was anyone's guess. The dispatcher, a scrawny, fuzzy-haired man, poured through log after log in search for the driver who ferried them around. A wonder he hadn't yet needed to display some evidence he knew any of them, a portrait or letter or something. A sprawling city like this, with more people than he'd ever seen, ought to be more discreet. Then again, if no one cares about the naked man with the guitar, discretion must not be highly valued.
After tracking down the driver, Killian repeats the story again, adding on this time that his presence is crucial for this intervention to be a success. That grasps the driver's attention and he rambles on and on about a sister-in-law who had been in dire need of the same thing a couple of years ago and "hadn't touched the stuff since."
And now, now, after spending more of his gold than he'd expected, he stands in front of a building even larger than the one that holds Swan's apartment, each window barred. Cocking his head at it, he deems the Land Without Magic a land of extremes, no middle ground to be found anywhere as the windows are either perpetually unlocked or barred. They are fond of hanging papers up on the exteriors, however.
It will be time soon. Digging into his pocket, he produces and uncorks the vial of dreamshade and dabs some onto his hook, a concentrated dose. It will spare the Dark One some pain, agonizing, prolonged pain, but the world needed to be rid of him long ago, and, he gulps, he himself will not survive this. As lax as this city can be with its windows and security, he won't be able to kill a man in public, in broad daylight, and walk away unscathed, and he wants to watch it. He wants to see the beast's face contort, his body seize and collapse onto the ground as the vein-like black poison replaces his blood.
Strangely, he sees Henry first, black little coat similar to his mother and...Bae. So, the lad has indeed grown up, chatting and smiling with the boy while Swan and the crocodile keep their distance, the latter he understands. If he'd ventured out here sooner like he'd wanted to rather than heed Cora, he wonders if warning Bae would have done any good—if he'd have tried to run. Perhaps he can die with a shred of honor, keeping the Dark One and magic out of the boy's, man's, life.
They go one by one into the building, and now he must cross the street if he is going to do this. He breaks into a run.
He swings the door open and knocks Swan to the side. Yet again she stands between him and his vengeance.
The wave of terror sweeping over Rumpelstiltskin's face doesn't quench his thirst quite like it should, but that's only because he isn't dead yet. Defenseless. Just like before when he'd had the nerve to board his ship and ask for Milah back, crippled and cowardly.
He shoves him right into the metal gate.
He hacks into him without hesitation, feeling the searing sensation of blood even through his hook. His eyes never leave him as he sinks to the floor, discordant throaty sounds emitting from his mouth.
"Tick tock," he says. "Time's up, crocodile. You took Milah, my love, my happiness, and for that I now take your life." The words spill out of him, hardly aware of them as they'd been pent up in his blackened heart for so long. His arm raised again, he will sink his hook into his flesh one more time before this world, one way or another, destroys him.